Darjeeling Selim Hill SF Organic

Selim Hill is a sprawling organic tea estate located in Kurseong area and in Darjeeling district. It's perched on a hill slope with varying elevations that rises up to some 3,500ft and facing the mountain on its north. This tea is a second flush.

Selim Hill is a sprawling organic tea estate located in Kurseong area and in Darjeeling district. It's perched on a hill slope with varying elevations that rises up to some 3,500ft and facing the mountain on its north.

The estate is spread over a gross area of 370 hectares out of which tea plantation is done in 170 hectares. It is spilt into upper and lowers segments and includes four villages. There are over 200 workers employed in the garden.

Selim Hill was established in 1870 by a British planter known as Henry.

There are several stories about discovery of Tea in India, but the most widely accepted story goes back to about 1815, when an Englishman had said to have noticed that people in Assam drank a kind of tea from a locally growing plant. It was later in 1823, Major Robert Bruce encountered with a Singpho King, where he was offered tea as a medicinal drink, he managed to send some sample of the plant to East India Company's Botanic Garden at Calcutta. The result of the identification was refused for some reason then. Again, Lieutenant Charlton was refused the identity when he sent some samples of the plant to Agriculture and Horticulture Society in Calcutta during his tenure in Assam in 1831. He confirmed that they tasted like Chinese Tea when dried. Finally, Charles Alexander Bruce, brother of Major Robert Bruce sent some samples in 1834, and during the same year on a Christmas Eve, the confirmation of Tea was declared, specifically called the Assam Tea, scientifically Camellia sinensis (var. assamica)

It was almost 175 years ago, the race for growing tea in India began. One of the major reasons was that the Assam Tea was much superior to the Chinese Tea and the English entrepreneurs could easily grow them here in India, to sell the finished products abroad. The plantation consisted of pure Chinese plants, pure Assam plants and also mixed plants producing the best of the Indian Tea. Within no time, tea, which was secret to the Singpho community, who went on elephants to sow the God gifted seeds and collect the leaves from tea trees in forest turned into huge plantations and a global business. .